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The Victim

Last year in an interview, actor Michael Biehn (The Terminator, Aliens) told me about how working with director Robert Rodriguez on the Grindhouse project was his inspiration for this film, his writing and directing debut which co-stars and was produced by his wife Jennifer Blanc-Biehn.

“I promised myself I was going to make a grindhouse movie at some point after I finished working with him,” Biehn recalls.  “I finished working on Planet Terror and ended up doing a television series and forgot about it.  When I was doing The Divide, I was in a coffee shop and I saw somebody reading Rebel Without a Crew, which is Robert Rodriguez’s book.  I said to myself I’m going to reread that book and go make a movie.  So that’s what we did.  I decided to make a grindhouse exploitation movie.

“I asked myself, okay, what do I really need to make this movie?  I figured I need some hot chicks, sex, dirty cops, drugs, a little bit of violence, a little bit of torture, a little bit of action, and, well, I’ll just throw in a serial killer.  So that’s what I did.  I wrote a story around those elements and we went out and shot it in twelve days and we’re really happy with the way that it turned out.”

Surprisingly, they have good reason to be happy.  While The Victim will not be sending out “For Your Consideration” screeners round about Oscar time, as slick exploitation fare, it is actually quite enjoyable.

It's certainly simple enough.  The story is this: two strippers are lured deep into the woods by a couple of sleazy lawmen with drugs and sex.  When one of the lawmen takes things too far, one of the strippers is dead and the other is on the run in the woods.  She stumbles on the cabin of a mysterious older hermit who prizes his privacy.  He doesn't want any trouble, but trouble is all around him in the form of the sexy damsel in distress and the violent, debauched cops.

The more the stranger fights getting involved, the deeper he is pulled into the quicksand.

It is simple.  It is primal.  It is violent.  It is exploitative.  It is sexy.  It is tacky.  It is lots of fun.

The final twist is probably one plot twist too far (in fact, it feels a bit tacked on), but otherwise The Victim will remind you - in a good way - of the surprisingly good third feature on a particularly strong drive-in movie slate.  The Victim has no pretentions to art, and as such, it oddly achieves a very primal variation of just that.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2012 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: August 24, 2012.

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Copyright ©2012 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: August 24, 2012.